Pain
by Corinder
Summary: Neji, Tenten, Rock Lee, Guy-Sensai. A mission goes wrong, and it forces Neji and Tenten to rethink the choices they made as genin.
1. Chapter 1

The mission had gone bad right from the start. Neji was alone, outnumbered even for his skill, fending off shinobi. In the distance were Tenten, Lee, Guy-Sensai, early but also outnumbered, their distant green and white colors a strange light against the black of the shinobi that separated them from him and him from them.

He was tired. He was nearly out of chakra. Sweat poured from him, sweat and blood, his white clothing red, white, torn, sticking, making it difficult to move as the torn fabric twisted and contracted around Neji's abused body. His hair was loose and clutching to his neck, shoulders, face.

He was so tired.

Tenten...

It'd been so long since he'd looked down at her. Resented her. Hated her, for Lee and Guy-sensai who would leave the two of them right from the start, hated her for being weak, and hated her for her weapons that cut and bit him. Taijutsu against metal. He'd given her hell the first year, nearly killed her so many times, but she'd exceeded his expectations. She'd shocked him when he collapsed, exhausted, tired, bleeding and nearly dead himself, and he'd realized then that he not only respected her, they shared the same belief that there was no such thing as fate when it came to a shinobi. There was talent or there was hard work. He had talent. She had hard work. She was the perfect partner.

Neji never looked down on her or Lee after that.

He grunted as another injury joined the first, an exhale of air that barely made a sound, his weary body starting to loose the ability to make any other sound at all.

It was funny. He had heard that upon death, time seemed to slow.

It did for him.

He saw the kunai. In the hand. Darker than the usual type, narrow, thirsty for his blood. Saw it aiming for his chest. His tired mind watched it, slowly, chakra failing to save him this time.

He was falling. He hurt.

Heaviness was against his chest, warmth, his mind slowly seeping the information into consciousness, like he was reading a book slower than it was being read out to him. His arms had gone forward. Wrapped around someone.

Tenten?

She had stood there, in front of him, a sudden flash of brown and white and red, and his arm had grasped her around the waist, around the chest, hand over her heart.

She smelt good. Smelt good, even sweaty, a smell that was unique to her. The smell he'd come to love during training. Who knew you could love the smell of a person's sweat? But it meant life and it meant strength.

The kunai went through his hand. Neji's mind, slow, milliseconds behind, didn't feel the pain, but felt the shock as it cut through tendon, bone, muscle, vein and artery, it mocked his attempt to protect Tenten's organ, slipping right through him and into her chest. She exhaled, a sharp exhale.

She was so warm. Her blood was warm. He'd never held her before, but she fit, fit and warmed him deep inside, warmed a part of him that had been overshadowed by grief and hate. Tenten...

They fell. Something impaled him from behind, another weapon, deep inside his own chest but he was only aware of the torture of that last fall. As they fell. She was heavy. He liked that he could feel her, feel her weight, liked that she wasn't as light as the wind, that her body was lean but still soft in places. His hand tightened against the stomach, a softness to it, a curve to it, not the flat style that most females seemed to like.

There was a flash of green, and another, as he and she fell heavily to the dirt, together, their long dark hair entwined, her head slumped against his shoulder. Heat was flooding out through the cracks of his pierced hand. His and her blood. His partner. Her heart was slowing. His was slowing too, like they moved as partners even that deep inside, their hearts beating at the same pace. Hot tears were starting to run down his face.

Tenten....

He realized that the pain wasn't the injury. It was shock. He loved her. Unconditionally, uncontrollably, painfully, loved her.

Tenten's heart stopped. Neji's eyes shut. 


	2. Priorities

AN:

Thankyou! I will keep going. (And work on the other story too, which does have a chapter in the works. .) I'll partly follow the manga's plot as I write this, I'll loop the two in together in a bit, and keep it like that for a while. So make sure you're kept up to date with the manga! is good at keeping the up to date chapters.

Nothing like a 'behind the scenes' viewing, hmm. :B

* * *

There's always a moment in a kunoichi's life when things change. Priorities. For the men, it was simple. Go to 'work'. Stay alive. Come home.

It was a little more complicated for the women. Just dating was a complication.

For example, a kunoichi knew to expect rape. She was taught that right at the same time as she became a genin, taught that it was a power thing, a way to torture a woman and use power over her. Men were raped too, true, but a kunoichi was more likely to be raped if her guard was let down. They were given special training to deal with this before it happened to them. All girls who became genin learnt this and accepted it as they accepted the risk of this in the same way that they accepted that they'd get injured in other ways. Some even would remove their 'virginity' through means just to make it easier should it happen. However, if a kunoichi dated, her boyfriend usually refused to accept this. And if they were raped, if the worst happened, it was the boyfriend who would have 'revenge' fantasies, and take it badly.

Then, if things got serious, there was the problem of public knowledge. You just couldn't let people know who you loved for fear that this news would be eventually heard by your enemies, and then used against you or your partner. This was further complicated by 'ranks', if your partner was lower or higher ranking, that might also alter the way people saw either or both shinobi. So while people did date, fall in love, and make it obvious what they were by spending together, to admit in public that they were in love or dating was one of the biggest taboos in the shinobi world.

You only admitted it if the next big problem for a kunoichi happened. Babies.

This lead back to the 'men can come and go, women can't.' problem that had always bothered Tenten. A baby took nine months just to make. Nine months where the kunoichi would have to stop work and lower her fitness. Then, after birth, she had to legally return to 'genin' missions for a further three months, gradually moving back up to her old duties as her fitness returned, as the baby aged. Konoha provided a 'nanny' for the rest of the baby's life, a person trained to both raise the kid and to protect it if it was targeted, which they had been during the great Shinobi wars. The tradition in Konoha was that if a kunoichi had to stay home for nine months, the shinobi father would willingly take small missions, even stay home himself, and endure this long village bound torture that neither was used to in the first place. Naturally not every male would do this nor would every female would let her partner put his life on hold as well, but it was the usual tradition.

Tenten wondered if she was reaching that half dreaded and half craved moment for a kunoichi when she woke. Looked down. Saw Neji sprawled half across her, laying on her bed, his head resting beside hers on the pillow. He was asleep now, breathing slow and easy, like he hadn't slept for years. He sometimes grabbed for her hand, then stopped halfway, like he wasn't quite aware of his actions nor understood why his hand would do that... but he'd never actually been like this before.

She frowned. He was clearly not supposed to be out of his own hospital bed, he was covered from head to foot in bandages and some of them had reopened in the trek from an untidy bed just a metre away. No... her eyes trailed from the bed, to the door, to the barred door handle. He'd barred the door first.

Tenten shut her eyes. His hand tightened around her waist and she felt a sudden rush of guilt as she realized he'd be noticing how she had gained some weight. He was always so perfectly lean, never a bulge or a soft squishy bit, and she had soft squishy bits.

Breathing slowly, she focused on that, aware that there was a big of pain involved in the motion. She remembered feeling the first thrill of fear that she'd known in her life, a panicked fear, seeing Neji alone so far. Tenten had heard orders from Guy-sensai but she couldn't remember understanding the words, and she doubted she obayed them, she'd suddenly sprinted ahead against Guy-sensai and Lee. Neji was dying. She had trained with him long enough to know that, know that he was seconds from it, and she'd run for him.

The kunai had struck her. Tenten remembered feeling a great relief and that was it.

She gazed across the pillow Neji's face, so close to her own, his forehead brushing against hers. His arm was across her, careful to miss the bandaged chest, hand against her lower back. Lower back with the soft bits. Tenten moved, slowly as to not jolt the wound, lifting an arm so that she could move his hand.

"Tenten."

His hand snatched her arm, sudden and unexpected, Neji's eyes opening as his hand made her arm rest back down where it'd been.

"Stay still." Neji ordered. Had he been awake all this time?

"Neji?"

"You died." Neji's voice seemed to crack halfway through 'died', and his hand returned to her lower back, rough hand against the bare skin there. He'd pushed up the cotton top she wore, Tenten realized, his skin against hers where it could. "Stay still."

"I died?"

"Don't talk either." Neji ordered, gruff and 'outranking', but his hand contridicted his voice by stroking her back with tiny gentle motions.

"But..." Tenten tried again. But what happened? Were Guy-Sensai and Lee okay?

"Tenten..." There was a note of warning there this time.

"Nej..."

She was suddenly and carefully pushed onto her back, Neji leaning over her, his long dark hair curtaining their faces. For a moment he stared at her, his hand cupping her face, a strange look of anger and something else mixed there. His hand slid down, slowly, down her neck, across her collar bone, pulling the thin hospital issued top open. Tenten gaped at him, but he ignored her, stopping before her entire chest was bared, his hand pausing over the spot where the bandages were thickest. Right over her heart. "I don't know if I should hit you for that stupid move back there or..." Neji muttered, his eyes lingering on her eyes again, then her lips, and Tenten could only lie there with stunned amazement as his finger found her lips and pressed against them, slowly. Hypnotized by something. Tenten's heart was pounding as she watched him.

The door suddenly jolted, as if someone had tried to open it, and Neji seemed to snap out of the daze he was in. He was back into his bed before she could blink and she stared up at the ceiling where his face had been.

* * *

Priorities.

A male shinboi received lessons. What to do if your teammate or partner was raped. What to do if the relationship moved onto a more serious level. If there was a pregnancy. If there would be marriage. It had turned Neji off the idea of a relationship for, what he had thought, was for good. Even when he'd suddenly discovered that he had control over his fate and that he respected Tenten, he had decided to stick to his choice of no relationships, no children, no complications.

He lay there, ignoring Tenten, wondering when the hell his priorities had changed. He had a nagging feeling that they may have secretly changed before he'd realized he loved her, before she'd literally died in his arms, and Neji was unnerved by the idea that such an important choice could change without him consciously acknowledging the change. Neji had assumed this would be easy to avoid. He'd date. Mess around, maybe. But never anything serious. No love, no relationships, no kids.

The finger that'd been exploring her lips was warm, damp, it'd already started to drift to his mouth before his mind caught up to the finger's actions and had forced it to stop in its path. Neji shut his eyes. Her lips, those damn lips alone, were enough to make him throw his choices out the window.

The door exploded open in a flood of green and then, simultaneously two cries of "Neji! Tenten!"

Neji turned to face Tenten again as she was first embraced by Lee and Guy-sensai, hard, harder than he liked. Didn't they know that her damn heart had been cut and her lung pierced? They may as well open the wound up again themselves if they...

He frowned harder as he was suddenly embraced too, Lee and Guy-sensai clutching to him, reminding him of his own physical hurts. God. Were they crying?

"You're alive!" Lee was crying, big fat tears running down into the clingy green, and he clung to Neji harder than he had to Tenten. "We carried you as fast as we could..."

Neji pushed at him, uselessly, but was relieved when Guy-sensai seemed to detach Lee with a gentle hand.

"Lee, let go."

"Yes, Guy-Sensai!" Lee responded as he usually did, over-energetic, as if he'd been ordered. It wasn't an order. Neji wanted to snap that it wasn't an order, that he didn't need to respond with such energy and devotion, but he was a little overwhelmed. He felt a strange affection for Lee too.

His eyes snapped suddenly to Tenten, who had started getting up, the movement making the bandage over her heart lift a fraction or two. Neji narrowed his eyes and was there suddenly, using a jutsu to make his speed faster, and pushing her back down the few inches onto the bed. "Stay still, remember?"

"Neji, I'm all right."

"Now now, Tenten, Neji's right. We nearly lost you." Guy-Sensai raised an eyebrow. Neji noticed the movement, but Guy-sensai didn't say anything more. Instead he moved to Tenten's side, and glanced to Neji, an unspoken 'Lie down, I'll do this' passing between them.

Neji moved back to his bed and lay down slowly, wincing as various pains hurt him. "What happened?"

"Mission successful, barely. Secondary team arrived seconds after we did. There was a medic in the secondary team who kept the two of you alive while we sent for more so we could move you. They retreated and there's currently ANBU tracking the last down. Your uncle is satisfied with the job you did."

Nodding, Neji turned to stare out the window. It was a mission to locate and disable a clan who'd been pretending to be Hyuuga. The problem had been that, to his shock, they did actually have Hyuuga eyes. It turned out that during the Shinobi war, when a Hyuuga died, this clan had waited. Then they'd capture the body, transplant an eye, one per person, and then had hidden as they trained and discovered how to use them. They may have gone unnoticed for longer but they'd gotten greedy, and several Hyuuga had been killed over the past two years with their eyes taken. Several more Hyuuga men had been involved in 'flings', as they put it, and it was discovered that the women of this strange clan were now pregnant with half a dozen or more Hyuuga children. He had disabled the women first, tied them up, tried to keep them as unharmed as possible. They carried Hyuuga children and though he didn't like the idea, he knew that the babies would be hunted and killed if the women didn't come to Konoha to raise the children. They would be treated with respect if they stayed, but allowed to leave the baby behind if they wanted, and the babies would be raised as any other Hyuuga baby was.

"The women?" He heard himself asking, picturing them, in various states of pregnancy. Some had been really young, thirteen maybe, making him wonder what the hell the Hyuuga men in his clan had been thinking. Then his mind betrayed him, as an image of Tenten floated by. Pregnant, glowing, laughing, her long hair loose as her body carried his child between her hips...

Damn.

Priorities.

A worse image, one of her being pregnant after being raped simply for being the partner of a Hyuuga, joined the first. This hadn't happened since the Shinobi Wars, but still...

He shook his head and tried to start the queory again.

"Were the women found?"

"We found them and brought them back. The Hokage is overseeing them for the moment." Guy-sensai was looking at him strangely, Neji's eyes dropping away first.

Lee interrupted the strange quiet between the two of them as he started to talk. Neji's mind heard the words but didn't understand them, and he lay back with a sigh, his body and mind exhausted.

"Lee, that's enough. Let the two rest. We have training to do." Guy-sensai interrupted Lee. He shot a glance to Neji again, Neji felt it, but soon had ushered Lee outside.

A quiet fell over the room again. Stillness. No, a tenseness, like there were words hanging and no one to speak them.

Neji resisted the urge to look at Tenten, but he stood up slowly, and went back to the door. Barred it. With her eyes locked on him, her mouth partly open, he walked back to her bedside, climbed onto her bed, and lay down beside her.

"Stay still." He ordered, softly, resting his head beside hers on the pillow again. Slowly, feeling an odd sensation of shyness that was absurd given that he'd seen her in various states of dressed or undressed during training, his hand wrapped around her again to rest on her back. "I'll know if you move."

"What if I have to go to the toilet?" Tenten seemed to have lost her usual strength too, it sounded almost as if she was having trouble speaking now. He glanced at her, but she wasn't in pain, so he dropped his head back down.

"I'll get a medic. How's the pain?"

"I don't feel any. Neji..."

He relaxed. Neji knew how to detect a lie in her voice. Her voice made him think of her lips, and thinking of that reminded him of how close he was to her lips. Damn.

"Shh." He ordered and shut his eyes. Watching over Tenten was harder than any damn mission.


End file.
